


Neither your honey nor your sting

by Hagar



Category: Jewish Scripture & Legend, Midrash - Fandom
Genre: Fairy Tale Style, Female Characters, Gen, Urban Fantasy, What is it with the apples anyway?, ראש השנה | Rosh HaShana | Jewish New Year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 12:16:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2348174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar/pseuds/Hagar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As one would say to a wasp: neither your honey nor your sting. Ah, but even a wasp will be of use to you. </p><p>What use a wasp? Come with me, and learn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neither your honey nor your sting

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by Aoife.
> 
> Shana Tova, everyone.

The baby sleeps. She wakes to the sight of a strange woman standing over her crib. Some babies, they will cry; most do. This baby just watches, her sweet little face gathered up in concentration.

The woman is an owl. Then the owl is gone.

 

* * *

 

The child keeps toddling off. “What is it with you?” her mother laughs as she picks her daughter up to bring her back. “Perhaps I should tell you _Little Red Riding Hood’s tale_ until you learn not to run off into the woods!”

“Come on,” laughs the child’s father. “These are not Europe’s forests; there are no wolves here.”

The child still watches, even when her parents bring her inside.

 

* * *

 

The child and her mother are standing in line at the grocery store. It will soon be Rosh HaShana, and the store is crowded.

“Why do we eat apples?”

The child looks: the speaker is a girl, older than her. “For a sweet new year,” the child says. “What are you, stupid?”

“No, you’re stupid,” the girl replies: “The honey is for a sweet new year.”

“What are the apples for, then?”

“Who are you talking to, sweetie?” asks the child’s mother.

“This girl.”

But the girl is gone.

 

* * *

 

Rosh HaShana comes around again, and the child is now of the age of mitzvot and so she is no longer a child, but a girl. She picks out a crate of apples to bring back to her mom, who is in the other aisle.

“God cast Eve from Paradise for eating an apple, you know,” says a man. He only has one eye, and he leans on a cane.

“Why do we eat apples, then?” the girl asks.

“To remember why it was worth it. They used to smear honey on the letters of the alphabet to teach little boys to love learning, too.”

“I’m not a boy.”

“Ah, but who took the first bite?”

She doesn’t like the man, so she sets her shoulders and walks away. When she looks back, over her shoulder, he’s still there.

He winks.

She carries on walking.

 

* * *

 

The girl washes her face in the school bathroom’s sink. When she looks up, an older girl stands behind her in the mirror.

The older girl says: “Neither the honey, nor the sting.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means if someone offers you a good thing and a bad thing, you should say ‘no’ to both. You shouldn’t wait on anybody’s love, especially if he doesn’t respect you.”

The girl frowns and asks “Do I know you?”

But when she turns around, the older girl isn’t there.

 

* * *

 

The girl eats neither apples nor honey on New Year’s. After the meal she excuses herself and goes out on a walk. She’s sixteen, now, old enough her mother has no good reason to stop her.

She’s only a short distance into the woods, when she thinks she sees an owl, and then another girl is there, standing before her. The other girl is a little older, almost a young woman.

“I know you.”

“But do you know who I am?”

“I can guess.”

“But what do you _know_?”

“I know the apple is poisoned. You were there before the apple, weren’t you? Before Eve.”

“I was.”

“Who _was_ that man?”

“A wasp who thinks he’s a honeybee, and never learns.”

“Why would anyone want to be a wasp?”

Lilith laughs and holds out both her hands. “Come with me, and learn.” 

**Author's Note:**

> The less-familiar references:  
> * The phrase "Neither your honey nor your sting" is from a midrash about the tale of Bil'am.  
> * "The use of a wasp" is from the tale of David, the Spider and the Wasp, originally in the Ben-Sira alphabet and told countless times since (most famously by Bialik, in _Sefer HaAgada_ ).


End file.
